Written Answers Monday 1 September 2008

Scottish Executive

Health

Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has an equivalent to the Rapid Review Panel reporting to the Health Protection Agency in England.

Nicola Sturgeon: No. The Rapid Review Panel assesses equipment, materials and other products that may be of value to the NHS as a whole, including NHS Scotland.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive whether guidance is issued to NHS boards and hospitals on containment measures to be used for patients suffering from Clostridium difficile.

Nicola Sturgeon: Guidance to NHS boards is provided in the Standard Infection Control Precautions model policies produced by Health Protection Scotland (HPS). HPS is currently drafting new overarching national guidance on Clostridium Difficile Associated Disease (CDAD) which will set out the containment measures that should be used for patients with Clostridium difficile. As advised in previous answers, the Scottish Government’s HAI Task Force has been informed by HPS that the draft CDAD guidance will be provided to them in September 2008.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive what key issues will be considered and measures taken in the (a) prevention, (b) containment and (c) transmission of Clostridium difficile.

Nicola Sturgeon: I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-15205 on 18 August 2008. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search .

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive whether it uses the information from the Rapid Review Panel to inform its own policy in relation to products that will help combat hospital-acquired infections such as Clostridium difficile.

Nicola Sturgeon: Yes.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive when the Vale of Leven Hospital was last inspected by NHS Quality Improvement Scotland; which areas of the hospital were inspected, and what were the conclusions and recommendations.

Nicola Sturgeon: I am advised by NHS Quality Improvement Scotland that it’s predecessor body, the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland, visited NHS Argyll and Clyde in 2004-05 as part of the Healthcare Associated Infection (HAI) standards peer review programme. The methodology used at that time meant that the board carried out a local self-assessment at board level rather than individual hospital site level. The external peer review team then assessed performance by considering the board’s self-assessment data and visited the board to validate and discuss the data provided.

  Revised and updated HAI standards were published in March 2008 and NHS boards are now carrying out local self assessments against them.

Hospital-Acquired Infection

Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-14337 by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 July 2008 and given that she was "aware of the cases of Clostridium difficile at the Vale of Leven in late May", why she did not instruct a look-back exercise earlier than June.

Nicola Sturgeon: Investigations by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde into cases of Clostridium difficile were on-going in late May 2008 and I was being kept regularly informed of the situation that was emerging. As evidence was still being gathered, and as the situation was being actively managed by the board public health professional team with specialist advice from Health Protection Scotland, it would not have been appropriate for me to intervene in that process by instructing a look back exercise any earlier than June.

NHS Funding

Jackie Baillie (Dumbarton) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive how much capital funding is being allocated to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in (a) 2008-08 and (b) the next three financial years.

Nicola Sturgeon: NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have been given a formula capital allocation of £97.417 million in 2008-09 and notified of indicative capital allocations of £98.92 million and £100.423 million in 2009-10 and 2010-11 respectively. Future years capital allocations will be determined by the outcome of the next Spending Review.

NHS Hospitals

Marlyn Glen (North East Scotland) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive what the percentage acute bed occupancy has been in (a) NHS Tayside and (b) Scotland, in each year since 2003.

Nicola Sturgeon: The information requested is published on the Scottish Health Statistics website under the Acute Hospital Care section. ( http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/3426.html ).

NHS Hospitals

Marlyn Glen (North East Scotland) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive what the percentage acute bed occupancy has been in each hospital in NHS Tayside in each year since 2003.

Nicola Sturgeon: The percentage acute bed occupancy for hospitals in NHS Tayside is shown in the following table.

  Table 1: Percentage Occupancy in Acute Specialites in NHS Tayside by Hospital1

  

 
 Financial Year Ending


 2003
 2004
 2005
 2006
 2007
 2008P


 NHS Tayside
 81.4
 81.4
 81.5
 82.3
 82.4
 81.9


 Ninewells
 82.9
 81.5
 83.4
 82.7
 84.9
 82.8


 Fernbrae Hospital2
 x
 100.0
 100.0
 100.0
 100.0
 ..


 Ashludie Hospital3
 91.9
 90.8
 76.2
 x
 x
 x


 Royal Victoria Hospital
 77.6
 84.9
 83.3
 84.6
 81.0
 87.1


 Perth Royal Infirmary
 87.4
 84.1
 86.0
 85.5
 87.8
 81.3


 St Margaret’s Hospital
 66.5
 66.9
 66.5
 63.7
 65.0
 69.2


 Aberfeldy Community Hospital
 68.9
 66.0
 68.0
 54.3
 70.6
 64.0


 Irvine Memorial Hospital
 54.1
 51.4
 48.0
 53.2
 54.9
 59.6


 Blairgowrie Community Hospital
 83.0
 82.1
 85.7
 80.6
 81.5
 79.0


 Beechgrove House4
 83.9
 49.7
 x
 x
 x
 x


 Arbroath Infirmary
 73.2
 68.4
 65.7
 68.2
 79.1
 86.9


 Brechin Infirmary
 78.7
 61.9
 68.7
 58.5
 61.2
 58.5


 Forfar Infirmary5
 70.1
 62.0
 67.0
 21.7
 x
 x


 Montrose Royal Infirmary
 82.6
 100.0
 82.5
 73.4
 60.2
 59.8


 Stracathro 2
 68.7
 65.6
 61.7
 57.1
 64.9
 ..


 Crieff Community Hospital
 74.0
 75.8
 72.8
 72.5
 84.9
 74.2


 Whitehills Health and Community Centre6
 x
 x
 x
 71.5
 82.1
 77.6



  Source: ISD(S)1.

  PData for year ending March 2008 are provisional.

  .. not available.

  x not applicable.

  Notes:

  1. The figures include NHS beds/patients in joint-user and contractual hospitals.

  2. Data for 2007-08 has not yet been submitted.

  3. From June 2006 onwards, data is for non-acute specialties.

  4. From June 2005 onwards, Beechgrove House no longer treats in-patients.

  5. No data received since April 2006 as hospital closed.

  6. Opened in June 2006.

NHS Hospitals

Dr Richard Simpson (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab): To ask the Scottish Executive, in light of patient records being found at Strathmartine and Law hospitals, what steps have been taken to inform the patients concerned.

Nicola Sturgeon: NHS Tayside had two requests from members of the public for information/reassurance and they have been dealt with. NHS Tayside consider that it would not be practical to go through debris and contaminated paperwork to identify specific names and then make efforts to contact them. In addition, advisers to NHS Tayside have suggested that the documents removed from Strathmartine Hospital be incinerated because of the possibility of asbestos contamination.

  Following investigation of the material that was discovered on the Law Hospital site in July 2008 there were no complete patient records found. A number of miscellaneous pieces of patient identifiable data were found. All the identifiable data was reviewed by health professionals and it was considered that there was no impact on the ongoing care of any individual as a consequence of the patient information that was found. As a result, and in light of the age of some of the material found, it was considered inappropriate and a potential cause of unnecessary distress to patients and/or relatives to attempt a process of contacting individuals.